Two Ragged Soldiers
by swalkerman
Summary: The price to pay for your sins is dearer to your heart than you can even comprehend. His fight for existence and against his very being rages on. The price to pay for daring to exist is to be damned and to be tormented. Her struggle to come to terms shall meet its end.


Amidst the monolithic swirls of dust, foliage and wreckage – an after-effect of a truly heinous disaster, known to all humankind, lies a hulking mass of steel, flesh and bone. What was once a sleek, dark purple machine had now been reduced to a parody of itself, held against its own will in the skies and in the effigy of Christ. The aspirations of those in the shadows, the suits of SEELE, had achieved what they had sought for nearly a lifetime – instrumentality. The EVA unit had remained in place, almost seemingly as a reminder of the failures of what was once mankind, and as a mockery to the struggle that had only ended in the demise of SEELE's nemesis, NERV. Neither organization could've truly anticipated things would end perfectly nor cleanly, but in the end, the ones with the higher power and pull had won out, leaving the loser to face oblivion. The pilot of the EVA unit, the boy, awoke yet again. His pale blue eyes, dullened by an age of isolation and softened by an eternity of reflection, opened once more, and slowly fluttered. In the cockpit of the desolate unit, surrounded by stale LCL and a front row seat to his own damnation – his own punishment for living and condemning his fellow man to joining one another in a ghastly existence as sickly orange primordial soup. Blinded by the rare flash of sunlight hidden beneath the onslaught of debris, the boy could only stare and think to himself. It was all he could do, really. Whether it be of a time when he had thought he had achieved some degree of happiness, or of the history of the world before the idea of an 'impact,' an event that was thrust onto the world in another attempt to become God, to kill God or to destroy a world that, to some, had not known one.

The howling. The howling of the wind outside, away from the boy's self-imposed prison, grew fierce, more violent, more harrowing. It was a deafening noise that shook the boy from his own doldrums, a way for him to escape from his problems. From reality. From those he had once known, once rejected, once held close to him. Yet, here, in this machine, a sacrifice meant to allow ancient men, to ascend to the heavens, he had only known a hell exclusively reserved for him. An eternity of torment, of the knowledge he had failed, the very right to redemption snatched away from him by a group of grinning mass production units, beings that had perverted the likeness of his own means to combat his enemy and that of the world. The enemy of his very existence. So how is it, in a fight to determine his own fate and to decide man's very right to exist, he had willingly given in to those vile things? The notion he had finally succumbed to his own self-destructive ways had never escaped him, nor did the possibility that his fight was futile and there was only defeat lying in wait for him. The boy, for a lack of a better word, had given up and accepted he had no right to live. He had willingly damned all mankind, including himself, to nothingness.

So why was he here? Why was it that he remained here, in the EVA, while for all he knew, everyone and every living thing on this planet Earth had returned to their one true creator, their mother Lilith? Much like before, the boy had been abandoned and left to languish in his own ruin. He knew of the truth of the EVA, of what it entailed and who had occupied the machine. At one point, what was once his mother had handled the unit, before becoming one with it to become an ambassador to humanity. A foolish venture that had only ended her life, but further sent the boy into a downward spiral, and proved the universe was playing a cosmic joke on him. If it had been intended to humor him, he clearly never dared crack a smile, a bitter look settling onto his face, never to leave.

He looked once more out to the maelstrom, searching within himself one final explanation on to why he had fell so low. His parched lips, not having known the touch of nourishment for what felt like centuries, hardly moved. Cracked and withered, they murmured. Within that movement, the barren whisper, was the boy's truth. The words he refused to speak for so long had come out. And despite the very fact he knew it was his own failure that had led him to this fate and that he had no way of fixing it, he still uttered that only thing he truly couldn't understand.

_"Spared. I've been spared."_

He couldn't comprehend why for all that he had done, for his willingness to return to where he once came, he had been left behind. The burden of this knowledge, the final disappointment, wore heavy on his weary soul. He could only curse himself now. He was nearing the end and he knew it. His role in Instrumentality had long past and ceased to be of use. Once again cast away. Once again deemed irrelevant and moot. He arched his head forward to examine his surroundings yet again. The same familiar cockpit of EVA-01 greeted his sight. There was no escape, physically, but spiritually, he knew he would soon be freed. All things meet an end, and the boy, after several centuries of wasting away as the memento of a living species, would die. He would be lying if he said he didn't embrace it, but to ultimately die is to cease being. To cease to exist. And that profoundly frightened him. For his fears, he was rewarded a tired conscience, one that urged him to let go and drift off into the void. In the past, he had resisted, but now, he had given in – as he once did before as a child in a fight to save the world, and again as some sort of twisted martyr when he came to terms with his own shortcomings as a human being and why he had been spared the fate of the primordial soup. It was a stigma, now and forever, he would bear – the boy child forsaken by even Lilith herself. The boy's eyes grew tired, the sound of wind turning to nothing around him. The cockpit in which he resided faded to white. Everything was so white, so bright and so beautiful. At last, the boy knew peace. It enveloped him, nurtured him, but only temporarily placated his ails. The light dulled.

A scene in a play he had acted out many times before began once again. A room, sterile and sleek, greeted him. A warm bed beneath his body, covered in white linen. A landscape laid out before him, outside his window, aroused a lurking fear inside of him. He did not want this. He was in the hospital room he had grown to know almost as a second home in his teenage years, where he brooded after numerous battles with the Angels, where he had spent time worrying and delving deeper into his own internal fight with himself. Yet again, a joke had been made at his expense and the return to a world before the war was the punchline. He could only look ahead blankly, a thousand-yard stare occupying those world-weary eyes, before looking at his hands. How many times had those hands been stained with the blood of others? Of his own lust? Of the greed and of the touch of others? It was all so tiresome. What was there to prove by sending him back here after all that had happened? He had so many questions weighing on his mind, but the possibility of getting answers was unlikely. Once again, he'd have to claw his way through a war that only promised doom.

The boy climbed his way out of the bed and limped toward the restroom. Upon taking a glance at his likeness, he saw he looked as he did all those years ago – although notably different in the face, his expression pale and worn. He stared into his reflection and only saw nothingness in return, a sight he had yet to grow used to, but the feeling stood firm. As he did this, a light click notified him of someone's entrance. With light steps and with grace stood before him Rei Ayanami. He knew the truth of her existence…he knew everything. Yet the desire deep within him still raged and it had troubled him greatly. Her red eyes bore within his soul, looking over him and attempting to read him; his blue eyes could only do the same, getting nothing out of her. This must've been a fresh one. What he refused to acknowledge was the presence behind her, the grimace of a man who was the splitting image of the boy, eyes framed by glasses. Gendo Ikari, commander of NERV. The boy's father. He now remembered. His name was Shinji, son of the commander Ikari.

"You've finally awoken, Third Child. Are you done running away?"

Shinji could only return the piercing gaze his father gave him, silence dominating the room and permeating the atmosphere with emptiness. At last, he spoke.

"Running away? You must be joking, father. Do you have even an inkling of what I endured?"

"What you have endured is irrelevant to me, child. The only thing you should be worrying about is the completion of your objectives. Your insolence towards authority is one thing, but I will not tolerate such unbecoming arrogance."

The commander came closer before stopping before Shinji, staring him down to exert his will over his son, to intimidate him. In a masterstroke, he leaned forward so his coming words would not be known to the girl standing in the background, the only witness to this rare encounter between father and son.

"Let me make this clear, Third Child – if you even dare cross me again, you will cease to exist. You will not be remembered by anyone. You will be a sacrifice, a heifer to the slaughter. Fulfill your duties as a soldier of NERV, as the pilot of the EVA, or die."

He leaned back to look upon what effect his words had and only saw the same look of disdain upon his child's face. His threat, while not wholly truthful, had no bearing on Shinji Ikari and his standing within NERV. His son, merely resigned to the truth of his own upbringing and the impossibility of attaining a normal life, was now dealing with the cards dealt to him, and this included a silent war between father and son. What began as a son desperate for a father's love, to be noticed, had transformed into a cold war that saw no end. While at times Shinji was powerless to Gendo's whims and his access to various assets of power Shinji couldn't dream of attaining, Shinji had the leverage of being a pilot and of knowing what struck the elder Ikari the hardest. Indifference to his threats was one of them. While his face didn't show it, Gendo found a reason to be perturbed at his son's coldness. It wasn't in the fashion he had taken upon his own detached manner in order to push everyone away, but in the way that hinted at the very notion that Shinji had grown weary of the constant mind games, of the mental onslaught of his duty as a pilot, and of the burden of being the son of Gendo Ikari. If the EVA was the shackles, his father was the chains and he himself was the ball dragging him down.

The brief exchange mercifully reached an end, Gendo Ikari's reason for being in the hospital ward now gone. Both father and son shared one final glance at each other before the elder left the room, beckoning the blue haired child to follow him. Before she left, however, she quietly motioned to him. Upon her face was a knowing look and within those red eyes, Shinji found solace. She mouthed the words he had heard before, in another time, and now yet again had heard.

_"I know everything."_

And then, he was left once again in that cold and distant silence.

_Act One / Tilt_


End file.
